


Ace in the Hole

by Airelle



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Episode Related, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 11:22:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airelle/pseuds/Airelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retake of the series VII episode, <em>Blue</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Ace in the Hole

**Author's Note:**

> First published in Fantastic Fantasies, 1999

          Lister awoke from the strangest dream of his life. He was appalled. Disgusted. Horrified.

          "Aargh! Aah! Get off! Get off!

          He clawed at his mouth, sitting on the hard floor of his quarters. How had he arrived here? Fell from the bunk, probably. Not that it hadn't happened before. He was a noisy, restless sleeper, and a reckless dreamer.

          But _this_? Dreaming of Ace - no, Rimmer - kissing him? Worse, himself kissing the man back?

          "Oh, Rimsy!"

          "Oh, Listy!"

          Unbelievable. The man had actually made a pass at him. Well, _actually_ in his dream, that is. He could not conceive of Rimmer - or Ace - ever doing this in real life. He remembered the slow realisation of what Rimmer was saying:

          "She's pretty attractive, though, isn't she?"

          "Is she? I haven't really noticed."

          "So she's _not_ as attractive as me, then."

          Nah, the real pain-in-the-arse Arnold Rimmer would never, ever have said that or done this.

          Now, Ace was another matter entirely.

 _What a guy!_ thought Lister, almost automatically.

          Ace-smoke-me-a-kipper, the archetypal hero, the man every woman (and not a small number of men) wanted in their bed.

          Except Lister. Lister wanted only Kochanski in his bed.

          So, why was he sporting a tremendous erection?

          He hadn't noticed at first. When he'd landed on the floor, he was still mostly asleep. Brutally awakened, he had only felt the impact on his bum, which was now smarting.

          A little more conscious, he realised with a jolt that his mind and his body had gone in two opposite directions.

          This was no news. Most of the time, Lister's body and his mind were not in close conjunction. One could say his mind had taken a quasi-permanent leave of absence. Perhaps it had been disgusted by the things this particular body could do. If souls existed, not a single one should have been doomed to inhabit the mortal vessel of Lister's body, whatever price it was supposed to pay for evil perpetrated in former lives.

          But Lister's body was noisily insisting that the experiment had been nice. Very nice indeed. It wanted more. It wanted it _real._ It wanted it _now._

          Lister began pondering the dream. What did he have against Rimmer, after all?

          Granted, he was a no-good, paranoid, mean-minded, tight-arsed son of a bitch.

          However, negative qualities have never stopped anyone from feeling lust for someone. Even - god forbid! - love.

          The man was not even a _man_! He was dead. He was the electronic duplication of a man. A computer sham.

          Nevertheless, kissing him had felt good. The hard light drive had been a definite improvement...

          And now, Rimmer _was_ Ace. Or Ace was Rimmer. Lister had not untangled things in his mind yet. Ace was... well, he was something else. He was _also_ Rimmer. The pathetic smeghead had become a saviour of people, a knight in white electronic armour.

          Having asserted he had nothing against Ace, or against Rimmer, the tiny portion of Lister's brain which tried to devote itself to logical functions gave him a warning.

 _What will Kryten do, if he finds out you get a hard-on while thinking of kissing Rimmer full on the mouth?_

          "Kryten can go fuck himself! Why, he could actually do it, with the length of his groinal attachment!"

          It was not a wise image. It made him think of the bump he'd felt in Rimmer's pants when they kissed. It made him think of the _heat_ that emanated from Rimmer's body.

 _Are hard-light holograms hotter than humans, the way cats are? He was furnace-hot. Well, it's not as if I had ever kissed a furnace before... But..._

          And the smell! Rimmer had smelled incredibly _good.._ Of course, a hologram, having no digestive system and no compulsion to eat chicken vindaloos at every verse end, could afford to keep a fresh breath.

          They simulated living people so perfectly. Did they forget that they were computer-generated copy, not the genuine article? Or did their own senses give the game away? They had sight, of course, and hearing. These were obvious, and necessary. But what about touch, smell, taste? Lister was beginning to develop an ache were most people believed he had only empty space: between his ears.

          Well, Rimsy had felt real enough when he'd kissed him.

          Lister began to think it could be a premonitory dream. A glimpse of the future. It would not be the first time they'd had such a glimpse, would it?

          Now, there was the little matter of the unfulfilled hard-on. You can't keep a good man down, they say. Lister was a _very_ good man.

          He tried thinking of Kochanski while giving himself a bit of self-comfort. He did it half-heartedly, just to check.

His brain pointed out the obvious to him: Kochanski was no good. It was true, she couldn't hold a candle to Rimmer. The man's face kept intruding. It was strange to begin embracing a delicate female form, and have it suddenly change in the tall, all-male form of Ace-Arnold-fucking-Rimmer. He wondered if he'd caught a mental form of the polymorph thingie.

          Fucking. _That_ was a particularly unfortunate wording. He shouldn't have mentioned this, even to his own private mind, or what passed for it. It evoked too many things. Ace's - Rimmer's - bum, tightly encased in his flight overall. The way Ace had to toss back his mane of blond hair. Rimmer, squeezing his worry-balls...

 _Balls._ Another unlucky association. Lister's brain was working extra hours. _Unpaid_ extra hours.

          Finally, he gave up Kochanski and concentrated on Rimmer. It worked very well. He achieved an extraordinary climax in an amazingly short time.

          Smiling, he went back to his bunk. He would try to sleep again.

          With a little luck, Rimsy would be back.


End file.
